Let us allow Jesus to meet us ‘with our defences down, with open hearts’, so that he may renew us from the depths of our souls. This is Pope Francis’s invitation at the start of Advent. The Pontiff addressed these words to the faithful during Mass celebrated this morning, Monday 2 December, in the Chapel of Santa Marta.

The journey we are beginning in these days, he began, is ‘a new journey for the Church, a journey of the People of God, towards Christmas. And we are journeying to meet the Lord’. Christmas is, in fact, an encounter: not merely ‘a seasonal celebration or — as the Pontiff specified — a memory of something beautiful. Christmas is more than that. We are travelling this path to meet the Lord’. Thus, during Advent, ‘we journey to meet him. To meet him with our hearts, with our lives; to meet him as he truly is; to meet him with faith’.

In truth, it is not ‘easy to live by faith’, noted the Bishop of Rome. And he recalled the story of the centurion who, according to the account in the Gospel of Matthew (8:5–11), fell prostrate before Jesus to ask him to heal his servant. ‘The Lord, in the passage we have just heard,’ explained the Pope, ‘was amazed by this centurion. He was amazed by the faith he possessed. He had set out on a journey to meet the Lord. But he had done so with faith. That is why not only did he meet the Lord, but he also experienced the joy of being met by the Lord. And this is precisely the encounter we desire: the encounter of faith. To encounter the Lord, but to allow ourselves to be encountered by him. This is very important!’

When we limit ourselves merely to encountering the Lord, he pointed out, ‘we are — though let us put this in inverted commas — the “masters” of this encounter’. When, on the other hand, ‘we allow ourselves to be encountered by him, it is he who enters into us’ and renews us completely.

‘This,’ the Holy Father reiterated, ‘is what it means when Christ comes: to make everything new again, to renew the heart, the soul, life, hope and the journey.’

At this time of the liturgical year, therefore, we are on a journey to encounter the Lord, but also and above all ‘to allow ourselves to be encountered by him’. And we must do so with an open heart, “so that he may meet me, tell me what he wants to say to me—which is not always what I want him to say to me!” Let us not forget, then, that “he is the Lord and he will tell me what he has in store for me”, for each one of us, because “the Lord,” the Pontiff pointed out, “does not look at us all together, as a mass: no, no! He looks at us one by one, in the face, in the eyes, because love is not an abstract love but a concrete love. Person by person. The Lord, a person, looks at me, a person’. That is why allowing ourselves to be met by the Lord ultimately means ‘allowing ourselves to be loved by the Lord’.

‘In the prayer at the beginning of Mass,’ the Pope recalled, ‘we asked for the grace to undertake this journey with certain attitudes that will help us. Perseverance in prayer: to pray more. Diligence in fraternal charity: to draw a little closer to those in need. And joy in praising the Lord.’ So “let us begin this journey with prayer, charity and praise, with open hearts, so that the Lord may meet us”. But, the Pope asked in conclusion, “please, let him meet us with our defences down, open to him!”

[Pope Francis, homily at Santa Marta, in L’Osservatore Romano, 3 December 2013]